Elaine Ou, Columnist

When a Blockchain Isn’t a Blockchain

The technology behind Bitcoin won't solve all the financial world's problems.

September 21, 2016 at 1:26 PM UTC

Corrected

September 22, 2016 at 4:47 PM UTC

Elaine Ou is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a blockchain engineer at Global Financial Access in San Francisco. Previously she was a lecturer in the electrical and information engineering department at the University of Sydney.

Not a blockchain.
Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

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The consulting company Accenture has come up with a way to render the blockchain -- the technology behind Bitcoin -- more palatable to the world of high finance. The innovation: Make it not a blockchain.

One of the defining features of the blockchain is its immutability. Numerous computers retain identical copies of a permanent, encrypted record of each transaction. Nobody can go back and make changes, so no central authority -- neither a government nor a bank -- is needed to guarantee the transactions' legitimacy.